After my passionate speech and the room filling with the peaceful assurance that it was time for us to escape our captivity, we sat in silent contemplation for several moments. Finally, my mother broke the silence and said one word, “How?”
I think that was the question each of us pondered during the silence. Jared had many people who, for whatever reason, followed him and would do just about anything to help him. He had more guards than were necessary to assure we accomplished our tasks. We rarely had time to ourselves when we were not being watched.
How would we obtain weapons? How would we communicate our desires to others? How would we convince the people that it was time to free ourselves from captivity? How would we train for battle?
My father directed each of us in the room to go to our homes and to pray for a solution then we would meet again in three nights at sunset. He also sternly warned us not to inform anyone of our thoughts until we had a basic plan.
Coriantumr expressed concern about what the guards would think if the same people met here again in three days, since the same guards usually worked at the same times and in the same places. The healer, Calia, recommended that we pray and ponder for the next three days, and bring any inspiration that we might obtain to her or to my Father.
Calia was one of the oldest members of our community and well respected by my parents and all who knew her. She was considered a prophetess as she seemed to have a direct line or conduit to God; my father often consulted her with important decisions. Her husband was killed by Jared’s guards during captivity as he was not physically able to meet the demands of his assigned tasks. Although he did his best to complete his tasks, he moved slower than the guards thought he should move, so they whipped him until he died. Calia was truly a gifted healer as she seemed to know exactly which herbs and other treatments were needed. In fact, several times Jared requested her services, even offering her a room in the palace but she would not stay there, as she desired to be with her people.
Before everyone departed, Coriantumr quietly mentioned that he had been having dreams about a way to fight enemies using only the body, especially arms and legs. I quickly stood up and enthusiastically commented that I had similar dreams. Without saying anything else, Coriantumr, who was taller and much stronger than me, stood up, walked over to me as if he was about to attack me. I grabbed his arm, circled my leg around and pushed my foot into his chest and threw him down to the ground. It was amazing! I had never before thrown my brother to the ground! And believe me, I tried many times. My mother looked at us in astonishment, knowing how many times I tried to take down Coriantumr and I seemed to have just done that with ease. We suddenly felt an assuring peace and comfort knowing that we were being guided by the Lord to defeat Jared and his armies.
My father dismissed everyone and we all had a new anticipated hope that a way would be provided for our people to finally have our God-given freedoms again.
Coriantumr and I eagerly discussed what we envisioned in our dreams, what we saw, and how we would be able to teach others what we learned. We started doing the different moves that we dreamt about. Our parents were intrigued with what they saw. We were amazed at how easily we were able to convert our dreams into skill. My father suggested that we create a plan to teach others the techniques and create scenarios to practice and master them. The teaching and training would need to be done in secret as we did not want Jared’s guards to know what we were doing.
Coriantumr and I stayed up half the night recalling every possible move that we could from our dreams. We accidentally woke up my mother who reminded us that we really did need to get some sleep because we still had our chores to do the next day. Sleep came slow as my mind continued to race, trying to remember what I had been taught in my dreams.
After waking up the next morning, Coriantumr and I continued to recall and rehearse what we learned in our dreams. We ate our morning meal and unfortunately had to leave to do our daily responsibilities but we went with a new energy and a new hope for a new life.
After our workday was finished, my sisters’ husbands, Len and Daniel, came to our house excited to learn our new method of fighting. Even though they were somewhat underweight because of living in captivity, they were both still large and muscular. They were impressed at how I was able to easily take down Coriantumr when I had never been able to do it before. Coriantumr appreciated the chance to train with Len and Daniel because we needed to develop a method to train others. This would give us experience before we showed others this method.
Coriantumr, being older, larger, and stronger than me, took charge of the training. I gladly watched him as he had an innate gift of leadership and teaching. I was also blessed with those gifts, but despite our brotherly mischievousness and competitiveness, I naturally wanted to learn from him.
Coriantumr started with what we thought were the basic moves. We really did not know what we were doing, we were just trying to duplicate what we imagined in our dreams. Surprisingly, the training did not go well. We did not understand why; Coriantumr and I argued, Len and Daniel seemed not to be coordinated enough to master the basic moves; which was odd since they both were strong and athletic. My mother, observing this, suggested that we take time to pray for additional help and guidance. She strongly believed that we were missing an important step or instruction.
We prayed and listened for guidance. Nothing came. We prayed again. Our father prayed with us. Still nothing. What were we missing? Len and Daniel finally left to be with their families. Coriantumr and I talked with our parents. We had felt so hopeful that what we learned from our dreams were answers to our prayers to escape captivity. My father wisely suggested that maybe there was something missing from our dreams that we did not recognize or we had not dreamt yet.
We carefully went through our dreams the best we could. We rehearsed moves that we saw. We sparred with each other using moves we dreamt about. Something was still missing. We went to bed with the hopes that the missing piece would be revealed to us.
(To be continued…)
Jaredite Stories 